Most people associate a capella with the hit 2012 movie Pitch Perfect; however, for some at Wilsonville High School, their first thought is our very own Barden Bella’s, Soul’d Out.
Soul’d Out is a zero-period run by Ms. Karen Bohart, affectionately named “K-Bo” by those musically involved. Axel Lauthner joined the group as a freshman. Now, as a sophomore, he believes Soul’d Out to be “a group of singers that are hand-picked by K-Bo to be the best they can be, and who she believes are great to represent our whole choir program.”
Lauthner especially thanks the program for allowing him to engage with a range of people he never expected, “You meet so many people, do so many things, [and] learn so many things about music you wouldn’t learn otherwise. You can always meet people you would never normally meet in it… I would have probably never met half of the seniors, juniors, sophomores, freshmen that I’ve met in Soul’d Out.”
As Soul’d Out starts their 2024 singing season with an assembly performance plenty of new arrivals litter their group, Senior Kate Thomas, a recurring member since her sophomore year, inquires, “I think for being the first performance of the year it went great! We were well prepared and I felt good about our overall sound.”
Soul’d Out singers are given the chance to show off what they work on every morning, Monday to Friday. Each person is fueled with a passion for music that motivates them to come together and create a symphony of voices.
However, the thrill of live music leaves place for flaws as well, “There were definitely some mistakes, but it was mostly due to the sound system in the gym. We couldn’t hear each other very well.”
The inside workings of emotions in the performance are explained by Lauthner as “definitely nerve-wracking because this is a new group with new people and we’ve never gone out of that way with these people before. So, it was a little skeptical of ‘How will this group behave in this kind of environment?’, but I think ultimately it was something that was exciting.”
Lauthner leaves his final thoughts as a wish, a hope “that our group can learn to have more fun with it. I think since this was the first performance we’re super nervous, but after this, I hope that we can kind of put our foot forward and do the best we can without that first-hand fear that we had going into it.”
He anticipates practice and hard work: “I think that we can work together really well and we can learn to be expressive, to sing out, to be as confident in what we’re doing as physically possible.”
